Bagheera

When you line up shots quickly, not having a stabilizer is not noticeable. It's when you take longer than a fraction of a second to line up a shot, that the gun sway begins. If you learn to take snap shots, even at those far range shots, you'll find that the stabilizer is a waste of a slot. Even if you're scoped the whole time, if you move your sights to a new target and then fire almost immediately, there is no sway.

Not being elitist (plenty of that on message boards in general), just being practical.

I guess if I wanted to be super super accurate at range with almost no penalty for error, and take more time lining up shots, I could go with the stabilizer, but that turns a recon sniper into a one-trick pony sniper. Even if I'm camped and guarding a flag or I'm the forward guy for an impending attack (such as sniping that engineer with the Pilum, before my squad tanks roll in, or sniping that engineer with the SAAW, before my squad air transport rolls in, or sniping that infantry in the AA gun/railgun) I'd still rather have Camo+RDX to take care of that armor that's causing my mates' grief.

Remember, you can do a lot of good by sniping high priority targets (as mentioned above) no matter what else you hear on the boards (you just have to know how to prioritize.) However, don't think that by sniping alone you are doing your team good. You need to do more, such as spot targets, lay down APMs at choke points, and use your RDX for anti-infantry, anti-armor, and asset destruction. Hell, sometimes if a guy goes inside a building where I can't snipe him, and he's going to do something very bad to my squad (especially if we can't see him), I'll put down the sniper rifle, active camo down to his location, and then knife him in the back (so my close-range gunfire doesn't alert the rest of his squad), allowing my squad to complete their goal, my points be damned.

Now, back to the subject of guns, which was one of the original questions by the original poster - Stock guns allow you to be stealthier, allowing ease of completing the above objectives, but the Zeller is important for knocking out motion mines and other explosives, provided you spot them and eliminate them in advance of friendly armor (yes I do this often, and believe me it helps.) Often, I'll be in an FAV, tracking alongside friendly armor (usually a squad mate), until we are closing in on an objective then I'll speed ahead and set up camp, to eliminate high priority infantry (engineers), and remove explosives from range (thank you Zeller.)

As far as long range sniping goes, ya sure it's fun, and it looks cool, and we all feel like Tom Beringer. However, I only do this when it's necessary, such as when covering two silos or two flags at once from my hide, or when I see engineers doing those long rage Pilum, SAAW, or stock anti-armor shots from extreme range, and they're f***ing up my friendly armor, because they're harder to hit with armor from extreme range (they can shoot then duck behind cover rather quickly.) The other high priority long range targets are rocket whores. By taking them out, you take out both a) a rocket whore! b) a guy with a defib.

You just have to train yourself to automatically fire upon the guy with a big f'in rocket on his shoulder first, (or a Pilum, or a guy lining up an assault rocket shot) BEFORE you start sniping other targets. These are the biggest threats to your team. Sentries annoy the hell out of me, so they're a quick and easy target to take down too, so that my team can concentrate fire on the infantry, and not on the sentry itself.